What is the big deal with Online play?

[Tispower]

Entroper said:

Tispower said:

On top of that, it can't be that hard for any developer to make a game online if it already has the multiplayer option, which virtually all games have. I mean if you have a Co-op multiplayer for instance, the only difference there is is that you replace player 2 with another console.

I agree with most of the rest of your post, but I wanted to comment on this part.

There is a huge, HUGE, HUGE difference, from a programming perspective, between multiplayer with everyone on one console and multiplayer online. Latency and synchronization issues turn a relatively simple game loop (collect input, perform actions, render the next frame) into a complete mess. If you know anything about programming, you should read up on lag compensation, client-side prediction, etc. to get an idea of what makes online gaming difficult to program, even on broadband connections (though these are an order of magnitude easier to handle than dialup).

 I was thinking in more in terms of broadband, as I only know a couple of people who still have dial-up, and they don't play any online, all the people I know who do play online have broadband. I am frankly suprised people still mention dial-up (perhaps it's different in the States). Ok, I guess there probably is a fair amount of programming, but my point is (probably phrased it wrong there), it's not going to add several months and millions of pounds to turn an offline co-op into an online one, as the data is already there. So it shouldn't be a major issue to the developers, and therefore, it is pretty shocking if a game doesn't have it. I.e. some of the reviews of R:FOM criticised it because it had no online co-op, but as it had deathmatches, and it was an early game (where there were less people with a PS3, and therefore less online players) it didn't really hurt it. I seriously think that within 2 years, if a game doesn't have some for of online (most likely deathmatches or co-op campaign) then it will be highly criticised and lose sales. Perhaps now at the start of the generation where the majority of people (it's gonna take a long time before the total sales of the three 3rd gen systems add up to the 150mil+ sold last year) still have last-gen consoles, and therefore the online community is going to be small, but when say the three consoles total over 40million, then it will probably become a major thing.